Warren Gatland, the Lions assistant coach, faces the press at a media conference held at the Sandton Sun hotel. Photograph: David Rogers/Getty Images

This is already a Lions tour with a difference. The tourists are currently camped in one of Johannesburg's top hotels in the upmarket suburb of Sandton and staying with them are a large proportion of the legion of journalists covering the trip.

This used to be the way in the days of amateurism, and not so long ago reporters would board the same coach as players to go to matches. Professionalism has erected barriers, however.

Four years ago in New Zealand, Sir Clive Woodward viewed the prospect of scribes in the team hotel with a horror bordering on paranoia. In 2001 in Australia, the travel company that organised the trip for both the Lions and the media was not allowed to tell reporters in which hotels the tourists were staying, never mind book them in.

This year is different and the relaxed attitude of the management has led to a reopening of trust. Yet it is still a distance away from the last amateur Lions tour in 1993. You had no misgivings then about approaching players as they wandered around the hotel and inviting them to sit down for a coffee and a chat.

Their time with the media is now allotted to short periods in a day and no contact beyond that is permitted. You can sense the wariness of younger players, whose anxiety even at saying hello is manifest. Eyes are everywhere, with even this slimmed-down version of the Lions having a large support team – although the prospect of getting stuck in one of the lifts with a player is not inconsiderable because few of the room keycards meant to operate them work.

The older members of the squad, who still remember the days when contact with the media was informal rather than proscribed, are more comfortable at making the first approach, but conversation is polite and perfunctory, not revelatory. The age of innocence has gone.

Put up or shut up

The Springboks are less enamoured at the prospect of sharing a hotel with the British and Irish media than the Lions. When their management found out that they would be billeted with the "foreign" media in Sandton for the last week of the tour, they ordered the hotel management to tell the reporters to find a different hotel.

The Rugby Writers' Association, displaying a resolve the Lions are looking to find on the field, told the South African Rugby Union that its members had no intention of finding new accommodation at such a late stage, with hotels in the area fully booked.

The Springboks dragged the Lions into the dispute and asked them to act as intermediaries, but the reply was to the effect that there was nothing to worry about. The RWA also pointed out that if the reporters moved out, they would be replaced by Lions' supporters, who would probably be more inquisitive and far more noisy.

The hotel in question is the one used by New Zealand in the week of the 1995 World Cup final, although it has been renamed. It was where the infamous Susie allegedly spiked a lamb casserole to leave a number of All Blacks feeling the effects of food poisoning on the day of the final, which South Africa won in extra-time, and where an orchestra of car alarms played throughout the night before the final.

The upshot is that the media are staying and the Springboks are organising alternative accommodation. 1-0 to the Lions.

Behind closed doors

The sixth floor of the Lions' hotel houses the bar and restaurant area and also leads into a large shopping mall. As patrons tuck into their eggs and smoothies, they are not far away from the wares in a jeweller's window.

Being in Johannesburg, getting into the shop is not as simple as opening a door. In front of it is a barred structure, resembling the door of a cell in an American prison. You have to ring a bell and wait for the bars to slide open.

You then have to stand in a very small space being scrutinised before the door proper is electronically opened. Downstairs in the mall is a Cartier store, similarly fortified. A guard with an earpiece stands outside and you are only allowed in if he deems you have honourable intentions, and deep enough pockets. Inside, more security staff pace around, conspicuous with their earpieces and bulging jackets. This is not the place to be seen buying something expensive.

The wheel deal

The middle of the walkways in the mall are lined with brand new cars and lines of hopeful salesmen and -women. The economy in South Africa shrank by 6.4% in the first three months of the year, the sharpest decline for 25 years, but you would not know it looking at the models on display.

There are a couple of souped-up Fiestas, but otherwise Aston Martins, Jaguars, Maseratis, Lotuses and emissions-belting, enormous 4x4s battle to catch the eye.

A difference now for the Lions between this tour and those when reporters were virtually part of the tour party is that owning such vehicles is no longer a distant dream for the player. As for the scribes …